IVOA Executive Committee Meeting (TM57)

TM57 - 03 Mar 2015 (Telecon)

WebEx Info:

Contents

• IVOA Executive Committee Meeting (TM57)
  • Logistics
  • Agenda
  • Reports from the Projects
    • Argentina - NOVA
    • ArVO
    • AstroGrid
    • Australia-VO
    • BRAVO
    • China-VO
    • ChiVO
    • CVO
    • Euro-VO
    • ESAVO
    • France VO
    • GAVO
    • HVO
    • VObs.it
    • Japan-VO
    • Ukraine VO
    • VAO
    • RVO
    • SA^3
    • SVO
    • VO-India
  • Report from the TCG
  • Reports from the WGs

Logistics

Tuesday, Mar 03, 2015 (16:00 UTC)

Agenda TM57

1. Roll Call and Agenda (JE)
2. Minutes of TM56
3. Review of Actions
4. Project Reports [Significant Events Only]
5. TCG status
6. Approval of new IVOA Recommendation(s) [Standing Item]
7. Progress on agreement of IVOA documents in the ADS
8. Progress toward an IVOA Operations Interest Group
9. Review terms up for Expiration
   • TCG Chair / Vice Chair (Extendable)
   • DM Chair / Vice Chair (no extension)
   • Grid and Web Services Chair (no extension)
   • Registry Vice Chair (no extension)
   • Semantics Chair / Vice Chair (Extendable)
   • Theory Chair / Vice Chair (Extendable)
10. Future Interops
    • Northern Spring 2015 - Sesto, Italy / Jun 15-19
    • Northern Fall 2015 - Sydney, Austalia (Oct 30-Nov01; after ADASS)
    • Northern Spring 2016 - S Africa (May)
    • Northern Fall 2016 - Trieste, Italy (Oct 21-23; after ADASS)

Argentina - NOVA

ArVO

AstroGrid

Australia-VO

• The All-Sky Virtual Observatory (ASVO) project has released new modules with its <a href="https://tao.asvo.org.au/tao/">TAO node</a>.
• ASVO has released a demo version for the SkyMapper node using <a href="http://www.asvo.org.au/blog/2014/04/15/asvo-wigglez-demo/">WiggleZ data</a>
• Data from the Arecibo Ultra Deep Survey (AUDS) and the GaLactic and Extragalactic MWA survey (GLEAM) have been ingested in the GAVO based ICRAR VO server.
• The Australian SKA Pathfinder Archive project (CASDA) is taking shape and implementing a whole suite of VO services. In addition they have identified a number of shortcomings in the VO standards with respect to Radio astronomical data. This will be reported on during the next IVOA interop.
• The next IVOA interop will take place between 30-Oct and 1-Nov in Sydney.

BRAVO

China-VO

At the beginning of 2015, AstroCloud, the China-VO service portal was selected as one of "Top 10 e-Science applications" by Chinese Academy of Sciences. Since its release on May 15, 2015, AstroCloud has served 2 telescopes for proposal submission, 10 projects for data archiving and management. 300 users have been registered, and more than 100 virtual machine instances have been created.

As the latest use case of "scientific data based astronomical education and public outreach" from China-VO, Chinese ancient constellation catalogue and figures are integrated into Worldwide Telescope (WWT), and released freely to the public. Related work was shown at the 225th AAS in Seattle in January 2015.

ChiVO

CVO

Euro_VO

The next Euro-VO project will be a Work Package of the ASTERICS project, currently in negociation with the European Commission for a start on May 1st and a four-year duration. ASTERICS (Astronomy ESFRI \& Research Infrastructure Cluster) ``aims to address the cross-cutting synergies and common challenges shared by the Astronomy and Astroparticle ESFRI facilities''. (ESFRI is the European Strategic Forum for Research Infrastructures, which develops a research infrastructure roadmap which includes all scientific fields. The 2010 Roadmap for astronomy includes E-ELT, CTA, SKA and KM3Net.) ASTERICS WP4, _Data Access, Discovery and Interoperability, will establish a close collaboration between the Euro-VO and infrastructure teams. It will develop seamless access to the data products of the ESFRI projects and pathfinders (which include VLT, HESS, MAGIC, LOFAR), and other large infrastructures such as the European Gravitational Observatory EGO, in the VO framework. The tasks cover support to data providers, support to scientific usage, and technological development. The budget foreseen for the WP is 4.5 Meuros on 4 years. The project partners on the VO side are CNRS/CDS, INAF, INTA and the Universities of Edinburgh and Heidelberg. The work will be done in collaboration with ESA.

ESAVO

France VO

GAVO

HVO

VObs.it

INAF has funded VObs.it for fiscal year 2015 with an amount of funding in line with the previous years. This will allow to maintain the current level of staffing, and to cover the expenses of the Northern Spring Interop 2015 in Sesto/Sexten.

The European Horizon 2020 programme has funded ASTERICS, a 4-years 15 MEuro project to foster a common approach to the main infrastructure programs endorsed by the EU ESFRI initiative (i.e. SKA, CTA, KM3Net and E-ELT) plus other world-class infrastructures (e.g. Euclid). INAF will receive about 1.5 MEuro and is involved in the following work-packages: WP3 - OBELICS (OBservatory E-environments LInked by Common challengeS), in WP4 - DADI (Data Access, Discovery & Interoperability) and in WP2 - DECS (Dissemination, Engagement and Citizen Science). VO-relevant activity includes authorisation and authentication, workflows, data access standards, and education and citizen science.

Within EGI-Engage, another project funded by the European Horizon 2020 programme, INAF/VObs.it will be in charge of building a gateway between EGI and the Canadian CANFAR, so as to federate the two clouds. This activity will be performed in close collaboration with CADC.

VObs.it is organizing the Northern Spring 2015 Interoperability Meeting, which will be held on 15-19 June in Sesto/Sexten (in the Dolomites), at the Haus Sexten Congress Hall hosted by the Sexten Center for Astrophysics (http://www.sexten-cfa.eu/ ). Organisation is progressing smoothly. The general info page is http://www.sexten-cfa.eu/en/conferences/2015/details/54-ivoa-interoperability-workshop--spring-2015.html).

INAF and VObs.it have started the organisation in Trieste of ADASS 2016 and of the Northern Fall 2016 Interoperability Meeting in mid-October 2016.

Japan-VO

Japan-VO team has been working in updateing its portal design to be more user-friendly. The prototype has been internally released, which is being reviewed by the team members. We expect its public release in the middle of April, 2015.

A good news is that our research associate, Dr. Kawaguchi, has succeeded to get a pernament faculty position in a university in Sapporo. This is a great success since, these days, it is quite difficult to get a permanent acedemic position in Japan.

There was a bad news. Our observatory, NAOJ, has been informed by the Japanese government a big budget cut. This budget cut affects the activity of the Japan-VO team. We have to review which activity should be retained very soon.

There was an international external review on all activities of NAOJ between 24 and 26, February. The Japan-VO activity was reported, as a part of Astronomy Data Centrer. The reviewer was Tony Tyson who applaused the construction of virtual observatory infrastructure in Japan as well as public databases of Subaru, ALMA and other observational facilities within NAOJ. The final review report is to be submitted soon by the review committee.

RVO

SA^3

SVO

(Since October 2014)

Manpower: 8 FTEs.

Meetings:

• The Milky Way unravelled by Gaia. Barcelona 2014 December 1-5
• VIII SVO School. Madrid 2014, November 25-26.

• Diez años de Observatorio Virtual en España
• Astroestadística. El "big data" del espacio
• A treasure trove of modern astronomy
• IAU Outreach Newsletter. Citizen science project: Near-Earth asteroids precovery
• Cometas y asteroides. ¿Peligro para la Tierra?

Ukraine_VO

USVOA

The USVOA kick-off meeting took place at the Seattle AAS in January, and it was well-attended by representatives of the US data community. The presidents of AURA and AUI were also at the meeting.

As mentioned earlier, the USVOA has been endorsed by the AAS exec and will operate under the WGAS umbrella. We're working to further organize this new group with a web page and other online presence. A USVOA telecon is planned prior to Sesto where we'll work out further details.

The NASA Astronomy Archive Virtual Observatory (NAVO) members have been preparing their renewal proposals, due in late March. Part of this work includes preparing a progress report on VO efforts that began in October 2015, which will be reviewed along with the programmatic proposals.

The NASA-funded Keck Observatory Archive (KOA) has been developing VO interfaces to its image data sets. These services are in the archive test bed, and KOA plans to release them by April 30. KOA wishes to give a presentation on this work as a case study in delivering VO-services at the June interop.

VO-India

Report from the TCG

Reports from the WGs